Tag Archives: Tom Morley

It is not just the rooms which have views in the Simon Reade stage adaptation of EM Forster’s novel: the characters all hold views on a variety of social personal and political issues. Some of these change; others are too deeply enbedded.

Young Lucy Honeychurch has the longest psychological journey to make. It is also arguably the most difficult. Lauren Coe makes her at the same time thoroughly plausible and just a touch irritating as she runs rings around most of her elders, their strictures and restrictions – not to mention their expectations.

Another excellent character study is Jeff Rawle as Mr Emerson, the self-made man wih a genuine taste for art who is more at ease with himself than the self-consciously middle-class people with whom he comes into contact. Simon Jones as Mr Beebe and David Killick as the Surrey vicar Eager also make their pompous marks.

For me, the great disappointment was Felicity Kendal as Charlotte Brtlett, Lucy’s over-fussy chaperone, so desperately determined to let down neither Lucy, her home-abiding mother (Abigail McKern) nor her own somewhat fragile social placement. Kendal goes all out to win the audience’s sympathy and is altogether too soft-spoken.

If Lucy is drawn to the slightly farouche and wild-child George Emerson, to whom Tom Morley gives the right air of unpredictablity, her socially-acceptable choice for mate is the buttoned-up Cecil Vyse; Charlie Anson decorates him with great assurance. Jack Loxton’s Freddy Honeychurch is another good portrait.

Director Adrian Noble takes us from springtime Florence to summer in Surrey at a good pace, assisted by Paul Wills’ minimally furnished set with projections to emhasise changes in location and time, dominated by flexible shuttered walls. Tim Mitchell’s lighting aids the contrast between Mediterranean sun and English dappled shade.

A Room With A View runs as the Theatre Royal, Norwich until 12 November with matinées on 9 and 12 November. It can also be seen at the Arts Theatre, Cambridge between 14 and 19 November.